Angie and the Airports

It's official. I hate airports with a firey passion that could only have been born in hell. Which airports are, so obviously my firey hate came from the airport. Logic.

I get to the airport in Istanbul exactly two hours before my flight to Bangkok. I stand in line for thirty freaking minutes to check in. When I get to the check in, the woman at the counter asks me how long I plan to stay in Thailand. I tell her thirty days, which is the allowed length or time for Canadians without a visa. She then asks to see my ticket out of the country. Which I don't have because, firstly, I've never found information telling me that I needed to produce one, and secondly, I had been planning to take trains and busses overland. So I get a little frightened. The lady at the desks directs me over to the ticket agents on the other side of the extremely large, international airport, and tells me she'll reserve me a seat, but that I need to get a ticket out of Thailand.

Over I head to the ticket counters, feeling like an idiot hauling my luggage all over the place. I explain to the woman at that counter what my problem is. I ask her to get me just a cheap ticket to anywhere in Southeast Asia because at this point I don't really care. Inter-Asia flights are quite inexpensive, so I knew that even if I didn't catch the flight, I wouldn't really care too much. This woman then proceeds to tell me that it's going to cost 150 Euros (about $225 Canadian), but that it is only a "ghost ticket"...I can't actually use it. This seems a little steep and sketchy to me, so I ask if I can pay with my credit card. When she tells me that they only take cash, I start to see what this "ghost ticket" is actually about, and why I can't catch a flight with it. Thank God I'd been in Turkey long enough to reconize a scam when I see one.

Next, I run all around the airport trying to find an internet stand. I finally find one, get online with Air Asia, and book a flight from Krabi (Thailand) to Kuala Lampur (Malaysia) for about $60 Canadian. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? The fine print, however, is that they won't let me print, even after I explain what my situation is. I think they work in tandem with the ticket sellers. Well my only option now is to write down all the information for my ticket and hope that the check in people accept it, because at this point, I've got about forty five minutes left to catch my flight.

I get to the check in counter, sweating from running, wide eyed with fear, ticket on the ready...and the lady checks me in. Without even asking to see my ticket out of Thailand. This is actually the exact same story that a friend of mine had when he was leaving Britain for Singapore. It appears that airport officials just get to decide on whatever they like. I end up making it onto my flight with five minutes to spare.

I then have a wonderful flight, no problem with my transfer in Doha (Saudi Arabia), and a very comfortable rest of my flight to Bangkok. I arrive at 6:30am. As I am heading to customs, I see a sign that says "Visa on Arrival". This trickiest of tricky signs roped me in. When I get to the Visa on Arrival counter, I see that I need 1000 Baht ($30) for my visa. I also see that I need small ID photos for the visa, which cost 200 Baht ($6). Thankfully I have some of these...in my checked luggage. I have only Euros on me at the moment. So I ask an official walking by where an ATM is. He tells me that it's on the other side of customs. So I hit the currency exchange counter (interesting that they had one of those but no ATM) and change about 50 Euros into Baht. I head over to the photo booth, get my ID pictures taken, and get told by the lady standing there that I don't need them if I'm Canadian. This is after I'd already spent the 200 Baht for them. Great. Well then I go sit down and wait for my number to be called for my visa. Thirty minutes later, an official walking by asks me where I'm from. He then informs me that Canadians don't need to apply for visas on arrival, and that I'll just get my passport stamped at customs.

Which I do, and finally arrive outside of the airport at 10am. I catch a taxi to Khao San road, which mysteriously went from being 500 Baht ($15) when we started the trip, to 600 Baht ($18) half way through the drive. But what do I do at that point? I'm already in the cab and I frankly don't want to be left on the side of the highway in Bangkok. I'm not going to squabble over $3 for something like that. Finally arriving on Khao San road, I grab a hostel for 180 Baht ($5-6) per night and immediately fall asleep.

So here I am everyone, in Bangkok! It's been a few days now, and I have done absolutely nothing. I haven't left Khao San road the entire time. But it's been amazing. I've been playing my favourite sport everyday, people watching. It's just so much fun to do when the whole atmosphere is a completely new experience. And I've also met some really nice people, some of whom I'm meeting up with later this month. I ended up missing my bus to Phuket yesterday because I was hanging out with a gent named Travis and totally forgot about it! So I rebooked and now head to the islands tomorrow, and hopefully you'll all hear from me safe and sound on Phuket.

Quote of the Day:

Travis is an American rock climber...his take on America? (Pardon the French Nana)

"America actually celebrates Colombus Day and the fucking retard thought he was in India."